What’s your skin in the healthcare game?

March 30, 2017Tamara CullVice President, Advisory Services

We had an inspiring first day of Liberation 2017—what did you think of the sessions you attended and the population health pioneers you met?

One key theme you probably noticed throughout the event is concept of getting your skin in the game. This is incredibly important, as healthcare is at a major tipping point in every sense of the word. Regulation and the political landscape is in flux. Social determinants of health are becoming central to how we treat patients. Economically, we have to figure out a way to lower cost, while improving the care of our most expensive patients—often participants in Medicare & Medicaid.

Find your grit

During Deb’s opening remarks, she talked about the importance of grit. It’s that dogged devotion that drives you to achieve a purpose. Healthcare leaders have to have grit to be able to zero in on opportunity and actually liberate healthcare.

Medecision, and its population health pioneer customers, all have this grit because we’ve got skin in the game. That was evident through the passion we saw during many sessions and topics, including:

Robert X. Fogarty’s keynote speech. Founder of the Dear World Project, Robert works daily to tell the story of people in short quotes written on their skin—literally, skin in the game. He told us of the late Stuart Scott, who said it’s about “how you live, why you live and the manner in which you live.” This rings true in healthcare—this transformation centers on how we treat patients so they can live well. We challenged you to boil your healthcare passion down into a quote—what was yours?

Four tenets of population health. This framework for population health is our way of getting our skin in the game. The four elements that we talked about today (gain enterprise alignment, harnessing data, targeting meaningful opportunities to identify, intervene and engage, and measure and monitor performance) make up our pathway to population health. This pathway, powered by our powerful apps and cognitive computing, will help our client stand up successful and meaningful programs.

Opportunity in rising risk. We heard a lot about treating complex, co-morbid patient populations—particularly those in Medicare and Medicaid. It takes grit to take on risk, but it also can bring great reward. We’re excited to see so many clients standing up programs around some of our costliest, sickest patients and realizing meaningful success. This risk responsibility and acceptance shows commitment to true healthcare transformation.

What’s your skin in the game?

At the end of the day, it all boils down to grit; our purpose in healthcare; our “skin in the game”. We hope you saw what our skin in the healthcare game is: We’re dedicated to liberating healthcare and helping clients pioneer what that looks like.

Like Deb said: “We can’t just cure disease. We have to cure the healthcare system.” That mission is where we find our grit. What’s yours?